Resources

  • Types

  • Genres

Züge ins Leben – Kindertransporte im 2. WK

by Jürgens, Uli (2016)

Ilse Melamid, Hans Menasse, Ari Rath und Dora Schimanko gehörten zu jenen Kindern, die 1938/39 mit so genannten Kindertransporten ins Ausland geschickt wurden, vor allem nach Großbritannien – organisiert von der Jüdischen Gemeinde und den Quäkern – oder auch mit Hilfe der Jugendalijah nach Palästina. Sie waren vor der Verfolgung durch die Nationalsozialisten in Sicherheit, wurden von wohltätigen Familien aufgenommen oder aber zu harter Arbeit verpflichtet. 45 min.

Wiener Library

Located in London is the world’s oldest Holocaust memorial institution. They have a large collection of Kindertransport materials.

Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust

by London, Louise (2000); Published by Cambridge University Press

Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s History

by Epstein, Helen (1997); Published by Boston: Little, Brown

A memoir of the lives of Epstein’s mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

When Time Ran Out: Coming of Age in the Third Reich

by Zeller, Frederic (1989); Published by Sag Harbor, New York: Permanent Press

Frederic Zeller’s story of his childhood in Berlin and escape to Holland, where he joined a Kindertransport. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

What Happened to the Children Who Fled Nazi Persecution?

by Sonnert, Gerhard and Holton, Gerald (2006); Published by New York, Palgrave Macmillan

This book aims to create a collective biography of Jewish young people who were born in Germany or Austria between 1918 and 1935 and fled to the United States. It endeavors to present a statistical picture as well as to capture personal experiences based on a five-year, in-depth study. One of the book’s aims is to provide readers with information to influence the view of immigrant newcomers in the United States today.

We Were Children Just Like You

by Eliach, Yaffa (1990); Published by Brooklyn, NY: Center for Holocaust Studies and Documentation

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

We Had to Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport

by Hopkinson, Deborah (2020); Published by Scholastic Focus

Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth’s experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and arrests.

We Came as Children: A Collective Autobiography

by Gershon, Karen (1966); Published by New York: Harcourt Brace and World

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

War Story

by Edelman, Gwen (2001); Published by New York: Penguin Putnam

Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success: 1880s – 1980s

by Berkley, George E. (1988); Published by Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books

Vielleicht Habe Ich Glueck Gehabt

by Kratz, Käthe (2002)

May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Verfolgung, Flucht, Rettung (Persecution, Flight, Rescue): Die Kindertransportet 1938/39 nach Grossbritannien

by Curio, Claudia (2006); Published by The Zentrum fuer Antisemitismusforschung of the Technische Universitaet Berlin

In this book, her doctoral dissertation, Claudia Curio delves into the question of why for so long pre-WWII emigration studies tended to overlook the Kindertransport experience in contrast to the attention given to the Youth Alijah. Through use of well documented case studies and extensive analysis Curio provides raises many issues of intimate concern to Kinder, and which, as she skillfully shows, had lasting influence on their lives. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Uprooted and Replanted: The Memoir of Helmut Heckscher from Hamburg to the Kindertransport to America

by Heckscher, Helmut (2017); Published by Xlibris

n this lively memoir, Helmut shares his experiences and adventures, starting with his childhood growing up as a Jew in Nazi Germany and his escape to the UK with the Kindertransport. He writes of working in a factory in England, his interment at the start of World War II, and nights in the subways of London during the Blitz. Helmut eventually reunited with his parents in Wisconsin, then was drafted into the Army. With a lively voice, Helmut tells the story of his remarkable life, and paints a picture of a refugee becoming an American in the 20th Century.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Use this website’s search function to explore the museum’s many Kindertransport-related resources.

Unfulfilled Promise – Rescue and Resettlement of Jewish Refugee Children in the United States 1934-1935

by Baumel, Judith Tydor (1990); Published by Juneau, AK: Denali Press

A scholarly book by the author of two theses on the Kindertransport movement. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.

Turning the Key

by Kramer, Lotte (2009); Published by Rockingham Press

Lotte Kramer has been described as a “Holocaust poet” and it is true that she writes feelingly about the family and friends she left behind when she came to Britain in 1939 in the Kindertransport. But her canvas is much broader. She writes about the landscapes of modern Europe, about the Fen Country where she now lives and about paintings and literature. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center

Trauma and Attachment in the Kindertransport Context: German-Jewish Child Refugees’ Accounts of Displacement and Acculturation in Great Britain

by Guske, Iris (2009); Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The present volume is the result of an interdisciplinary oral history research project, which was carried out at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. While each Holocaust survivor’s developmental story is unique, it is, however, linked to the others’ by the common experience of negotiating an identity between two countries, cultures, and religions against the background of unparalleled political upheavals, and as such also sheds light on, and offers ways out of, the traumata suffered in present-day contexts of enforced migration and displacement.

Total Recall

by Paretsky, Sara (2001); Published by New York: Delacorte Press

Too Young to Remember

by Heifetz, Julie (1989); Published by Detroit: Wayne State University Press

Julie Heifetz’s collection of interviews with child Holocaust survivors. May be out of print. Try your local library or Holocaust Memorial Center.